Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies Across Communicative Contexts

■ Jonathan Daniel Rosa Graduate School of Education Stanford University [email protected]

Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies across Communicative Contexts1

This article examines the racialized relationship between ideologies of language standardization and what I term “languagelessness.” Whereas ideologies of language standardization stigmatize particular linguistic practices understood to deviate from prescriptive norms, ideologies of languagelessness call into question linguistic competence–and, by extension, legitimate personhood–altogether. Throughout the article I show how these ideologies interact with one another, and how assessments of particular individuals’ language use often invoke broader ideas about the (in)competence and (il)legitimacy of entire racialized groups. I focus speciﬁcally on dimensions of the racialized relationship between ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness in contemporary framings of U.S. Latinas/os and their linguistic practices. I draw on a range of evidence, including ethnographic data collected within a predominantly Latina/o U.S. high school, institutional policies, and scholarly conceptions of language. When analyzed collectively, these sources highlight the racialized ways that ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness become linked in theory, policy, and everyday interactions. In my examination of these data through the lens of racialization, I seek to theorize how ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness contribute to the enactment of forms of societal inclusion and exclusion in relation to different sociopolitical contexts, ethnoracial categories, and linguistic practices. [language ideologies, racialization, U.S. Latinas/os, standardization, education]

White-Thunder, a man round forty, speaks less English than Menomini, and that is a strong indictment, for his Menomini is atrocious...He may be said to speak no language tolerably.

–Bloomﬁeld (1927:437)

Her English is horrible, and from what I hear, her Spanish isn’t that good either.

–A teacher commenting on the English and Spanish language abilities of the principal of New Northwest High School, 2008

162 Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 163

Introduction his article examines how processes of racialization organize the relationship between ideologies of language standardization and what I term “language- Tlessness.” Whereas ideologies of language standardization are often understood to stigmatize particular linguistic practices perceived as deviating from prescriptive norms, racialized ideologies of languagelessness call into question linguistic competence—and, by extension, legitimate personhood—altogether. This relationship is illustrated by the quotations above; one is taken from Leonard Bloomfield’s well- known article “Literate and Illiterate Speech” (1927), and the other is from a conversation that I had with a teacher while conducting fieldwork in a predominantly Latina/o2 Chicago public high school. Bloomfield initially frames White-Thunder in relation to ideologies of language standardization that characterize a speaker’s proficiency in a given language as “complete”/”incomplete” and “good”/”bad.” For Bloomfield (1927:437), White-Thunder “speaks less English than Menomini” and “his Menomini is atrocious”; in terms of the categories above, White-Thunder’s English is comparatively “incomplete” and his Menomini is comparatively “bad.” Bloomfield (1927:437) shifts from these articulations of ideologies of language standardization to state that White-Thunder “may be said to speak no language tolerably.” This is a racialized ideology of languagelessness; rather than assessing particular language proficiencies using ideologies of language standardization, ideologies of languagelessness involve claims about a given person’s or group’s limited linguistic capacity in general. It is not by chance that ideologies of language standardization and ideologies of languagelessness would appear in close proximity to one another, as in the Bloomfield example. Both of these language ideologies invoke broader ideas about belonging to language communities and the polities to which these imagined collectivities are understood to correspond (Silverstein 2010). Specifically, ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness are hierarchically ranked approx- imations of belonging to and exclusion from these communities and polities.3 I argue that racialized conceptions of language, which define legitimate language in terms of racial groups whose linguistic practices are stereotypically understood to correspond to standardized written text, link ideologies of language standardization to ideologies of languagelessness. As a result, what might appear as perceptions of particular nonstandardized practices can in fact racialize populations by framing them as incapable of producing any legitimate language. It is through the lens of this racialized relationship between ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness that the second quotation above, in which a white high school teacher assesses the language abilities of her Latina principal, must be analyzed. In the context of a longer statement about the principal’s incompetence and intellectual inferiority, the teacher draws on ideologies of language standardization to criticize the principal’s purportedly limited English and Spanish language abilities. According to the teacher, the principal’s English is “horrible” and her Spanish “isn’t that good either”; this is similar to Bloomfield’s construal of White- Thunder’s English and Menomini. White-Thunder and the Latina principal are associated with distinct ethnoracial categories, linguistic codes, and historical moments, but their language use and personhood are racialized similarly—that is, perceived as having no legitimate place within the nation-state. This form of racialization is articulated and organized by the relationship between ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness.4 To the extent that these linguistic assessments function in racializing ways without explicitly invoking race, they exemplify the covert nature of many racializing discourses (Dick and Wirtz 2011) and allow people to reproduce racism while promoting colorblindness or maintaining that we inhabit a postracial society (Alim and Reyes 2011; Chun and Lo 2016). Throughout this article, I will show how ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness interact with one another, and how assessments of particular individuals’ language use often invoke broader ideas about the (in)competence and 164 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

(il)legitimacy of entire racialized groups. Specifically, I demonstrate dimensions of the relationship between these ideologies in relation to contemporary framings of U.S. Latinas/os and their linguistic practices. I draw from a range of evidence, including ethnographic data collected within a predominantly Latina/o U.S. high school, institutional policies, and some scholarly conceptions of language. In doing so, I draw connections between the stigmatization of Latinas/os across a range of contexts through raciolinguistic ideologies that “conflate certain racialized bodies with linguistic deficiency unrelated to any objective linguistic practices” (Flores and Rosa 2015:150). These various contexts include the framing of bilingualism as a handicap in U.S. public schools, the classification of multilingual communities as “linguistically isolated” in the U.S. Census, and the delegitimation of heritage language practices in higher education settings. When analyzed collectively, these sources highlight the racialized ways that ideologies of standardization and languagelessness become linked in theory, policy, and everyday interactions. While I focus on language ideologies surrounding the English and Spanish linguistic practices of U.S. Latinas/os, it is important to keep in mind that the example of White-Thunder above points to the ways that any racialized group can be faced with linguistic stigmatization involving ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness; this analysis also suggests how a group that is not yet racialized could come to be racialized through these ideological and institutional processes. Thus, the broader goal is to develop a framework that theorizes how the racialized relationship between ideologies of standardization and languagelessness enacts forms of societal exclusion in relation to different sociopolitical contexts, ethnoracial categories, and linguistic practices.

Theorizing Standardization, Racialization, and Languagelessness Ideologies of language standardization relate to what Silverstein (1996:284) describes as a “culture of monoglot standardization,” which is linked to long-standing Enlighten- ment ideologies that presume the primordiality of the one language-one nation-one people construct (Bauman and Briggs 2003). This monolingual political imaginary informed the emergence of modern nation-states and its ongoing hegemony is reflected in the widespread belief in the U.S. context and elsewhere that monolingualism is the natural human state of being (Bonfiglio 2010). Veronelli (2015:119), writing about the “coloniality of language,” suggests that the historical and contemporary racialization of languages and the populations with which they are associated continues to reproduce “the colonizer’s imagination of the colonized as having no language, that is, no Eurocentrically valorized expressivity.” In contrast to such historical accounts, recent scholarship focusing on joint shifts in language ideologies and globalizing political economies has explored how the forms of stigmatization associated with monolingual imaginaries can be deceptively reproduced through the neoliberal promotion of multilingualism as a valuable resource in transnational marketplaces (Duchêne and Heller 2012; Flores 2013). These shifts are particularly relevant for racialized populations such as U.S. Latinas/os, whose English-Spanish bilingualism, far from creating opportunities for inclusion and upward socioeconomic mobility, is often seen as a handicap rather than a skill (Zentella 2007). Throughout the article I emphasize the intertwined nature of the relationship between race and class—that is, my analysis of racialization attends to the ways that racial and class structures are jointly organized. However, I also argue that race-based analyses make it possible to understand particular forms of linguistic stigmatization and delegitimation that often elude class-based analyses. For example, the Latina principal of the high school described throughout this article enjoyed relative class privilege vis-a-vis most of the teachers in her school and engaged in a range of standardized multilingual language practices, yet she was still viewed as linguistically and intellectually inferior in ways that white teachers subordinate to her in class standing were not, despite their primarily monolingual and occasionally nonstandardized language use; these use. In fact, these stigmatizing and delegitimating views Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 165 potentially contributed to the eventual dismissal of this Latina administrator from her position as principal.5 In starker terms, narrowly focused class analyses cannot account for the range of historical and contemporary forms of abjection faced by racialized populations, from colonization, enslavement, and broad institutional exclusion to mass incarceration, deportation, and extrajudicial violence. These various phenomena all have socioeconomic components, but they involve not only hierarchies of labor but also racialized hierarchies of personhood. Ideologies of languagelessness participate in these linked race-class dynamics by shaping different populations’ socioeconomic experiences and positioning language practices associated with these populations in a range of ways spanning from ideal citizen-subjectivity to abjection. The linguistic dexterity of racially minoritized populations such as Latinas/os is perpetually devalued in the context of a U.S. monolingual hegemony, where English is positioned as the language that “ideally express[es] the spirit of [the] nation and the territory it occupies” (Gal 2006:163). However, cultures of “monoglot standardization” are characterized not simply by the promotion of a single language, but rather by an investment in the value associated with particular standardized varieties of a given language. Thus, it is not the English language in general that is embraced in a U.S. culture of monoglot standardization, as demonstrated by the derision of English language practices associated with marginalized groups. For example, linguistic forms stereotypically tied to African Americans are commonly stigmatized and used to rationalize African American societal marginalization. As such, we regularly encounter the view that if particular groups would just embrace standardized English, they would be provided readymade access to mainstream societal inclusion and upward socioeconomic mobility. This perspective interprets structural inequality as a linguistic problem requiring linguistic solutions, rather than as a politico-economic problem requiring politico-economic solutions. However, “since monoglot Standard is a cultural emblem in our society, it is not a linguistic problem as such that we are dealing with” (Silverstein 1996:301; author’s italics). Thus, for analytical purposes, standardized American English should be conceptualized as a raciolinguistic ideology that aligns normative whiteness, legitimate Americanness, and imagined ideal English (Flores and Rosa 2015). This framework helps us to understand how some white people who deviate from standardized English linguistic norms are able to ascend to the highest societal ranks (e.g., George W. Bush and the U.S. presidency),6 while other racialized persons’ apparent production of standardized linguistic forms can be stigmatized as language-deficient.7 Thus, members of racialized groups can be discriminated against regardless of their language use. Hill argues that these linguistic inequalities are central to the everyday enactment of “white racism” (2008), as well as the reproduction of “white public space,” which is “a morally significant set of contexts that are the most important sites of the practices of a racializing hegemony, in which Whites are invisibly normal, and in which racialized populations are visibly marginal and the objects of monitoring ranging from individual judgment to Official English legislation” (1998:682). This racializing hegemony positions particular groups’ language use as disorderly and in need of monitoring or remediation (Roth-Gordon 2011), while leaving the practices of other groups unmarked altogether. Naturalized assumptions about the relationship between standardized English and societal inclusion inform seemingly objective characterizations of linguistic practice, often using terminology such as “proficiency,”“mastery,”“fluency,” and “native ability” (Bonfiglio 2010). These characterizations are associated with the policing of language use for racialized signs of deviance and foreignness which construe particular populations and practices as illegitimate and out of place. In Urciuoli’s (1996:35) analysis of the racial, class, and linguistic stigmatization of Puerto Ricans in New York City, she explains that “the influence of Spanish on English is racialized whenever an accent, ‘bad’ grammar, or ‘mixing’ are equated with bad habits, laziness, and speech that is somehow not language.” Note that Urciuoli’s analysis uses racialization to link ideologies of language standardization 166 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

(e.g., assessments of particular language use as “bad”) with ideologies of languagelessness (e.g., assessments of particular language use as “somehow not language”).8 These processes can be understood using Silverstein’s (2003:535) conical model of standardization and stratiﬁcation in which “top-and-center folks can look down- ward-and-outward, as it were, toward peripheries at various degrees of negatively valued deviation from their imagined full-time, default, or unmarked identity.” Within any culture of language standardization, these top/bottom and center/ periphery hierarchies organize structures of societal inclusion and exclusion linking language, place, and ethnoracial and class personhood. Through standardizing institutions, people are socialized to raciolinguistic ideologies about more and less legitimate language practices, the contexts where they can be used, and the people who use them.9 In this article I focus on the slippery nature of this cone of standardization and stratiﬁcation, and the ways that the racialization of language can push minoritized groups and languages to the lowest and most peripheral points, no matter what their credentials (as illustrated in the teacher’s comment about a Latina high school principal who holds a doctorate in education). The following section explores these issues by examining linguistic ideology, policy, and practice within a predominantly Latina/o Chicago public high school.

Latina/o Bilingualism as Languagelessness in New Northwest High School New Northwest High School (henceforth NNHS)10 is a highly segregated public school on the Northwest Side of Chicago that opened in the fall of 2004. Of its nearly 1,000 students, more than 90% are Latina/o. These U.S. Latina/o students, like the principal of this school, are evaluated against what Heller (1999) describes as bilingualism imagined as “double monolingualism” and are, as a consequence, doubly stigmatized by their perceived inability to produce legitimate English and Spanish and their production of “supposed ‘non-languages’” (Gal 2006:171). In other words, whereas bilingualism is generally associated with abilities in two languages (e.g., English and Spanish), it becomes redefined as linguistic deficiency altogether (Urciuoli 1996; Zentella 2007), constructs them as raciolinguistic “Others,” and naturalizes their broader societal marginalization (Rosa 2016). Throughout this section I explore how hegemonic language ideologies, covert racializing discourses, and policies that promote English monolingualism combine to institutionalize Latina/o bilingualism as languagelessness within NNHS. On June 7, 2008, NNHS held its first graduation ceremony. At the beginning of the event, the school’s warm, authoritative Puerto Rican principal, Dr. Baez, welcomed the audience with an English-language greeting. She stood alongside Ms. Dıaz, a well-respected Dominican staff member who directed the school’s bilingual education programming and was designated as the Spanish language interpreter for the event. After Dıaz offered a translation of the greeting, Baez intervened momentarily to account for her use of an interpreter:11

Excerpt 1: Linguistic insecurity? Baez: Good morning, and welcome. Dıaz: Buenos dıas, y bienvenidos a todos. Baez: Ustedes saben que yo hablo Espanol,~ pero a veces no recuerdo todas las palabras. (You all know that I speak Spanish, but sometimes I don’t remember all of the words.)

Dr. Baez’s comments, which were not translated into English, elicited an empathic chuckle from the audience. It is unclear whether Dr. Baez’s claim to occasionally forget words in Spanish referred to the difficulty of translating for oneself in real time or to a more persistent inability to recall particular vocabulary. Either way, this Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 167 confession did not necessarily position her as linguistically incompetent vis-a-vis the attendees, but rather as someone with whom many Latina/o audience members might identify strongly.12 Dr. Baez carried on full meetings with teachers, staff, parents, and students in English and/or Spanish depending on the context, but it is possible that for formal events such as the graduation she did not feel as comfortable using Spanish. Regardless of her regular demonstration of linguistic dexterity, we have seen it that Dr. Baez’s English and Spanish could still be viewed as illegitimate. Dr. Baez’s potential expression of linguistic insecurity at the graduation ceremony echoed particular teachers’ ideas about her intellectual and interlingual shortcom- ings. As described above, Ms. Johnson, a white, self-identified monolingual English- speaking special education teacher with whom I was standing at the graduation explained to me that, among other signs of her stupidity, Dr. Baez’s English language use was “horrible, and from what I hear, her Spanish isn’t that good either.” Ms. Johnson provided the example of Dr. Baez’s use of the phrase “making application” in a letter of recommendation for a teacher who was applying for a position at another school. Although a somewhat arcane usage, various forms of the verb phrase “make application” can be found in communicative venues emblematically associated with standardized English, such as the New York Times13 and The Guardian.14 However, when produced by Dr. Baez, Ms. Johnson interpreted this phrase as “horrible” English. Ms. Johnson’s perspective was shared by other teachers who suggested to me that Dr. Baez lacked the intellectual capacity to hold her position in the school. If Dr. Baez, the bilingual school principal with multiple university degrees, including a doctorate in education, was subjected to such discriminatory thinking and covertly racializing discourses, the consequences for students, who possessed far less institutional capital than she, were even more dramatic.15 When I began conducting fieldwork in NNHS by serving as a classroom tutor in mandatory study skills classes, I was troubled by a noticeable pattern. In one classroom after another, students who were officially designated as “English Language Learners” (ELLs)16 sat in the corners of the classroom, usually closest to or farthest from the door.17 Based on my observations and interactions, the majority of students in any classroom engaged in English and Spanish linguistic practices regularly, but there was little interaction between mainstreamed students and those designated as ELLs.18 This finding is similar to other studies focused on fraught relations between bilingual adolescents who were born and/or raised in the United States and their ethnoracial counterparts who are more recently arrived to the United States and/or are viewed as possessing limited English language skills (Mendoza-Denton 2008; Shankar 2008). Whereas mainstreamed19 students interacted freely between groups, students designated as ELLs seemed to be cut off from general classroom affairs. The tutors, some of whom were bilingual in English and Spanish, quickly discovered that students were unable to understand many of the teachers’ instructions in these English-dominant classrooms. This was slightly less the case in classes with bilingual teachers (approximately a quarter of the teachers with whom I interacted) who occasionally provided instructions in Spanish to students privately if they noticed that students designated as ELLs did not understand a given task. Interested in identifying ways teachers and administrators could work to foster mutually beneficial educational relationships among these students, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Baez to discuss this topic. The exchange in Excerpt 2 reveals our disparate language ideologies:

Excerpt 2: Deﬁning “bilingual” 1 JR: A lot of the Spanish-dominant kids who are immersed into English-dominant classrooms, a lot of times when I’m in the classrooms, they sit in the corners of the room, in the front corner or the back corner= 168 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

5 DB: But that’s up to the teacher because that wouldn’t happen with me. I would make sure I paired them off (with kids who speak Spanish and English)= JR: Well that’s, this is the point, there are so many kids in the classroom who are 10 fully bilingual, so I wonder= DB: We only have 89 students who are bilingual here. It’s very deceiving. JR: What do you mean? DB: We have 900 and something (total students), but only 15 89 are bilingual. JR: Come on. DB: Yes. JR: What does that mean? DB: They’re bilingual. That means they don’t know the language. 20 The other ones just don’t want to speak it. JR: No, when I say bilingual, oh, so you’re saying that there are only 89 who speak English and Spanish? DB: No, there are 89 who need help= JR: Who are English 25 Language Learners. DB: Right. JR: OK, OK we’re talking about two different things. DB: Right. JR: So 89 English Language Learners, right? 30 DB: Uh-huh. JR: I’m saying that when those kids are in classrooms, a lot of times= DB: The English Language Learners? JR: Yeah. 35 DB: The 89 of them? JR: The 89 of them, a lot of times they’ll sit in the corners together, and, and, they’re sort of, it’s almost like they’re separate, and my concern is that= DB: But those, those 89 are in 40 sheltered classes, which means those are all...bilingual.

My well-meaning, yet na€ıve effort to probe this issue resulted in the principal’s explicit articulation of language ideologies surrounding bilingualism in a form that I had not previously encountered. She defined “bilingual” in relation to the transitional bilingual education program, such that bilingualism was equated with Limited English Proficiency (LEP).20 When I claimed that there “are so many kids in the classroom who are fully bilingual” (lines 9–10),21 Dr. Baez was quick to disagree and to remind me that the school had only 89 bilingual students. She was emphatic about this number because Illinois state laws require schools to hire additional staff depending on the number of their students who are designated as ELLs. If more than 89 students were designated as ELLs, NNHS would have been out of compliance with state laws. This is why Dr. Baez made sure to restate the exact number of students designated as ELLs in lines 35 and 39. While Dr. Baez’s statement in line 19, “They’re bilingual. That means they don't know the language.,” reflects institutional discourses and regulations, her usage of “bilingual” to mean language-deficient was a normative referential practice among students and school employees that demonstrates that the hundreds22 of students who regularly engaged in both English and Spanish linguistic practices in the school were not defined as bilingual in a positive sense. This corresponds to Fishman’s (1981:519) long-standing insight that since the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, which “was primarily an act for the Anglification23 of non-English speakers and not an act Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 169 for bilingualism,” the notion of “bilingualism has become a newspeak euphemism for ‘non-English mother tongue’’’ (519). As a result, “‘bilinguals’ are...non-English mother-tongue speakers; ‘bilingual teachers’ are those who teach them; ‘bilingual programs’ are those that Anglify them” (519). Thus, the definition of English Language Learners as “bilingual” within NNHS is a product of the devaluation of bilingualism through decades of educational language policy and ideology.24 However, bilingualism was not merely devalued in this context—it was completely inverted. “Bilingual” students’ language skills were measured only in relation to their purported limited English proficiency; there was no formal way in which their Spanish language abilities were recognized as academically useful.25 To be bilingual was not to use more than one language; it was to use less than one language in particular. Since these “bilingual” students’ language use was not perceived as corresponding to standardized written English, they were understood as not knowing any legitimate language at all. This racialized ideology of languagelessness has led to the classification of thousands of Latina/o students as “non-nons,” a category of “Spanish-background school-age children living in the United States who are reported to be non-verbal in both English and Spanish” (MacSwan, Rolstad, and Glass 2002:395) or as “semilingual,” a term used to describe “the linguistic competence, or lack of it, of individuals who have had contact with two languages since childhood without adequate training or stimulation in either” (Cummins 2001:40; Martin-Jones and Romaine 1986). Such classifications stem from discriminatory language assessments that define legitimate Spanish and English linguistic competence in highly narrow terms, systematically erase Latina/o students’ Spanish and English abilities, and reproduce the racialization of particular populations. Dr. Baez was sensitive to race-based disparities within bilingual education. Specifically, she described her concerns with the assessment of students’ language abilities and the level of curricula designed to meet their educational needs:

Excerpt 3: Bilingual education as “dumbing down” 1 DB: I think sometimes even bilingual education, it, it, keeps people back. For example, I’m looking at those ACCESS26 tests now, our students, they’re made to, set up to fail. I mean those tests are not even made up for them to move on to the next level. I believe 5 after three years, whether they succeed on those tests or not, three years is sufficient time. Sometimes students abuse it, they, they want to be in bilingual because they find it easier. I do believe more in an immersion program. JR: But I mean a demanding bilingual program. Do you think that 10 there could be a bilingual program that had high, high standards? DB: Right now, I believe in bilingual education just for transitioning, because what happens is, they become crutches, it becomes a crutch. When you’re in for five years and all that, and you still don’t learn, kids will take advantage. Whereas when I came here 15 there was no bilingual. I didn’t know the language, but when I’m immersed in it, I do not believe though that they should dumb you down and say okay you don’t know the language and they put you in fourth grade when you should be in sixth grade. That’s, that’s wrong. 20 JR: So if the kids are going to be immersed, then, my only concern= DB: I mean, let’s put it this way: Do you dumb down the Polish kids? Do you put them down in a less grade? You put them in an immersion program, they all learn. Everybody that comes to 25 this country, you know? 170 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

Dr. Baez’s comments reflect concerns about the disparate, racialized ways in which Latina/o students designated as ELLs experience ongoing educational exclusion as compared to their white counterparts (e.g., Polish students designated as ELLs). In her view, language proficiency assessments underestimated students’ language abilities; similarly, prolonged stays in bilingual education programs prevented students from learning at grade level. This intertwining of discourses of bilingual education with conceptions of disability and deficiency illustrates how the implementation of educational language policies racializes particular populations by positioning them as languageless. Dr. Baez’s Chicago-based perspective reflects her experiences living and working in predominantly Latina/o, African American, and Polish neighborhoods since she migrated to the city from Puerto Rico as a toddler. She evaluated bilingual education not only in terms of her more than 30 years of employment in Chicago Public Schools, but also in relation to her experience of entering Chicago Public Schools as a monolingual Spanish user and learning English in an immersion context. Like Dr. Baez, many Latina/o parents in Chicago and elsewhere have strong opinions about the negative impact of bilingual education programs and seek to prevent their children from being placed in such programs (Baltodano 2004). Recalling their own educational experiences, particularly the stigma attached to students designated as ELLs, they fear that participation in such programming will cause their children to become objects of scorn and fall behind grade level. The interesting irony is that these perspectives are often held by bilingual Latinas/os who socialize their children using Spanish and English. By ensuring that their children are placed into “mainstream” (i.e., by default, English-only) classrooms, they inadvertently contribute to the stigmatization of the Spanish language practices to and through which they socialize their children. Yet, these parents’ views also reflect their critical awareness of the lack of enriching bilingual education programming in public schools, such as two-way bilingual and biliteracy programs that are advocated by many bilingual education scholars and practitioners (Garcıa 2009). Since Dr. Baez and many Latina/o parents view existing bilingual programs as deficient educational plans designed for linguistically deficient students, they value the placement of Latina/o students within mainstream, monolingual tracks, thereby (re)producing the stigmatization of “bilingual” as an inferior status. Dr. Baez’s ideas about bilingual education were in many ways similar to her broader educational approach. She reported that she wanted her students to be “seen as young Latina/o professionals,”27 which, for her, meant that they needed to learn English as quickly as possible. However, the surface assimilationism of the English- only language policy that Dr. Baez embraced was counterbalanced not only by the ubiquity of her Spanish language use, but also by other employees’ and students’ regular displays of bilingualism. In fact, NNHS’s limited authorization of Spanish language use for official educational purposes was not so much a sign of the school’s allegiance to assimilationism, but rather an entailed outcome of broader district-wide, state, and national language policies. These policies promote the creation of mainstream public schools where English predominates and in which languages other than English are used only in “foreign language” classrooms or transitional bilingual education classrooms. The administratively sanctioned use of Spanish throughout NNHS resisted these directives. On the social networking website, Facebook, NNHS alumni created a group page titled, “You know you went 2 NNHS when...” One student’s contribution to the group was: “You know you went to NNHS when you hear people talking in Spanish through the intercom,” referencing the fact that Spanish could be heard regularly over the intercom for official, school-wide announcements. Not only could Spanish be heard regularly over the intercom, it was also a default language for Dr. Baez’s communication with students. She regularly addressed students as “mijo/a” (my son/daughter), usually followed by her demand that they tuck in their shirts (“¡Metete la camisa!”) in compliance with school dress codes. Thus, Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 171 while strictly adhering to prevailing language policies, Dr. Baez also created an educational context in which the use of both Spanish and English was normative for informal communication throughout the school. Mandatory language policies create a stratified, class-based distinction between elite and remedial bilingualism (Duchêne and Heller 2012; Heller 1999). That is, while bilingualism is understood as a valuable asset or goal for middle-class and upper- class students, for working class and poor students it is framed as a disability that must be overcome. In the context of the intertwined dynamics of race and class in the United States and elsewhere, these language policies become key ways of managing minoritized populations that are understood to present problematic forms of linguistic diversity (Gal 2012; Roth-Gordon 2011). The stigmatization enacted through these management projects frame minoritized bilingualism as remedial and illegitimate, which reflects the racialized relationship between ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness. The following section explores connections between manifestations of racialized ideologies of languagelessness within NNHS’s approach to bilingual education and those within broader spheres of educational language policy.

Languagelessness across Scales of Educational Language Policy As we have already glimpsed, in the context of a U.S. culture of monoglot English hegemony, seemingly innocuous classifications of students’ language abilities can function in covertly racializing ways by positioning particular populations as unfit for nation-state inclusion on linguistic grounds. Based on her joint awareness of the educational exclusion of Latina/o students designated as ELLs and the need to adhere to policy, Dr. Baez occasionally spoke favorably about “immersion programs” (i.e., mainstreaming students designated as ELLs into classroom settings where English is the default language of instruction), but “transition” was the educational approach that she advocated most frequently. This is no coincidence, since “transition” is the policy for students designated as ELLs both in Chicago Public Schools and the state of Illinois. This policy encourages neither the maintenance nor the development of skills in languages other than English; that is, overcoming English language deficiency is paramount. However, the raciolinguistic construction of legitimate academic English in relation to normative whiteness perpetually positions various racialized populations as not yet having acquired these language abilities regardless of their actual linguistic repertoires or the amount of time they have spent in transitional educational language programming. This section explores how, for many Latina/o students, perpetual relegation to a remedial linguistic status through educational language programming reflects the ways that such programming is linked to a racialized ideology of languagelessness. Transitional educational language programming as stipulated by Chicago Public Schools and the state of Illinois corresponds to educational language policy on the federal level. Contrary to popular belief, while the paradigmatic 1974 Lau v. Nichols Supreme Court ruling required the provision of resources for students designated as ELLs, it “did not mandate bilingual education” (Wiley 2007:100). The subsequent Bilingual Education Act of 1978 began to redefine the federal policy definition of bilingualism. Efforts toward broadening legislation that was largely defined in relation to “Spanish-speakers” resulted in the use of categories such as “children of limited English-speaking ability” in amendments to this act (Wiley 2007:102). The emphasis on English language deficiency rather than abilities in languages other than English laid the groundwork for bilingual education programs that would focus on transitioning students from the use of languages other than English to monolingual English use. These programs promoted curricula oriented toward assimilation and monolingualism as educational best practices. National educational language policies, as well as various English-only move- ments, are rooted in language ideologies that frame the United States as a nation in 172 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology which standardized English is and should be the nation’sonlyofficial language. As a result, “non-English languages are spoken of as foreign, native, or indigenous languages, regardless of where the speakers live” (Santa Ana 2002:212). Santa Ana (2002) analyzes these issues in the context of California’s Proposition 227, popularly referred to as “English for the Children.” This anti-bilingual education legislation, which was voted into law in 1998, sought to ensure “that all children in California public schools shall be taught English as rapidly and effectively as possible” (Santa Ana 2002:198). Santa Ana (2002:204) writes that in this legislation, “the primary language of children is considered a problem, and treated as inessential to ‘real’ education.” This perspective was reflected in Dr. Baez’s and many Latina/o parents’ view of transitional/sheltered programming as an educational detour. Educational language policies in Illinois and throughout the nation leave little to no room for two- way bilingual education (that seeks to support and build skills in more than one language), which Santa Ana (2002:206) characterizes as “a complete pedagogy based on how learning can best be facilitated.” NNHS’s approach to serving students designated as ELLs reflects the hegemony of deficiency-based approaches to language assessment and anxieties surrounding the high stakes of educational accountability. Thus, despite expressing a positive orientation to two-way bilingual education, Dr. Baez embraced transitional programming as a best practice and articulated bilingualism in terms of limited English proficiency, in line with district, state, and federal policy. However, she sought to maintain a culturally responsive environment in an overwhelmingly Latina/o school while still adhering to hegemonic, standardized English-focused language policies. Dr. Baez opposed the views of several teachers who claimed that students in their mainstream classes should have been designated as ELLs and placed into bilingual education programming. These teachers’ concerns point to the multiple ways in which students designated as ELLs can be disserved through the hegemonic embrace of transitional bilingual programming. Students officially designated as ELLs are placed into transitional programs that devalue skills in languages other than English and frequently deliver content that is below their grade level. Meanwhile, the mainstreaming of students formerly designated as ELLs into classrooms where English is the default if not exclusive linguistic mode of instruction devalues skills in languages other than English. Mainstreaming also marginalizes students whose linguistic repertories do not separate languages in ways that correspond to stipulated communicative norms within English-dominant or English-only classrooms. Administrators and teachers are therefore required to choose between two detrimental options. The effort to transition students designated as ELLs into mainstream English language classrooms as quickly as possible emerges from anxieties about the ways that educational underachievement both stems from and leads to perceived linguistic deficiency. For Dr. Baez and others concerned about the linguistic marginalization of Latina/o students, the goal is to ensure that students are not designated as ELLs for any longer than necessary. Students in the state of Illinois who have been designated as ELLs for six or more years are labeled Long-Term English Learners.28 In the sense that this relatively new label is often used to classify students who purportedly lack “academic language” in both English and their “home language,” it is linked to the classifications and conceptual- izations of “non-non” and “semilingualism” mentioned above. These various categories are based on presumptions about the distinction between elite and minoritized bilingualism. Whereas elite bilingualism is framed as a phenomenon in which academic proficiency in one’s “first language” contributes to the mastery of academic proficiency in other languages, minoritized bilingualism is framed as a phenomenon in which a lack of academic proficiency in one’s “first language” hinders one’s ability to develop academic proficiency in other languages.29 However, it is crucial to analyze assessments of “academic proficiency” as ideological perceptions rather than measurements of empirical linguistic practices. By doing so, it becomes possible to understand how classifications using such notions are rooted in raciolinguistic ideologies about group inferiority that position particular populations’ language practices as inherently non- Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 173 academic. These groups’ perpetual designation as ELLs or Long-Term English Learners reflects the ways that a racialized ideology of languagelessness continually prevents them from being perceived as legitimate language users. The contrast between the remedial notion of bilingualism that informs the creation of categories such as “Long-Term English Learner” and the conceptualization of elite bilingualism is anchored in the deficiency associated with classification as an ELL in the U.S. context. Open-enrollment schools such as NNHS are sites of minoritized bilingualism, where racially and socioeconomically marginalized students are cast as inferior; this contrasts with the elite bilingualism practiced in selective enrollment or application-based schools. Students designated as ELLs are housed almost exclusively in open-enrollment schools. This creates the ironic situation in which many application-based charter schools in Chicago are called “[foreign] language academies,” despite the fact that they contain few students designated as ELLs, if any at all. This situation is not particular to Chicago Public Schools; it is a common characteristic of urban districts throughout the nation. A racialized ideology of languagelessness positions minoritized bilingualism as illegitimate within mainstream educational settings, much less elite academic spaces. Interestingly, Ms. Johnson, the aforementioned NNHS special education teacher who questioned Dr. Baez’s intelligence and language abilities, suggested that students designated as ELLs and special education students occupy a shared position as second-class students in public schools. Selective enrollment schools and application-based charter schools, however, accept almost none of these students. In many of these selective settings, all students can take core courses in languages other than English and classroom language learning is combined with trips to countries in which languages other than English predominate. One Chicago language academy’s website states, “Spanish, German, French, Italian or Chinese are as much a part of your day as social studies, mathematics, science, language arts, music, art, and physical education.” Its homepage highlights stories such as “April in Paris,”“Students leave to Italy,” and “Students in Barcelona, Spain.” Unlike the overall demographics of Chicago Public Schools, these language academies often have far fewer low-income students and far more white students. The homepage of the language academy described above also highlights the school’s Parent Teacher Association, which “is dedicated to raising more than $100,000 each year to enhance and advance our children’s educational experience.” As opposed to NNHS and other open-enrollment schools in which bilingualism is framed as a problem to be managed, these language academies draw on parents’ resources in order to create school environments that presume academic English competence and define “foreign language” competence as value added for the already linguistically, racially, and socioeconomically elite. Schools such as NNHS are not afforded the same privilege to reframe language policies in these ways, and NNHS students’ parents do not have the resources to fund enrichment educational activities. These dynamics highlight the ways that race and class frame some students as legitimate users and learners of various languages and other students as perpetually linguistically deficient or languageless. The following section connects the above analysis of ideologies of languagelessness within high school settings to a range of institutional contexts.

Languagelessness across Contexts Ideologies of languagelessness are present in many institutional contexts other than K-12 schools and on scales beyond the local Chicago one described above. Since the 1980 decennial census, the U.S. Census Bureau has posed a two-part language question: (1) Does this person speak a language other than English in the home? and (2) How well does this person speak English? The first question requires respondents to report the language other than English that is spoken at home and the second question requires respondents to categorize themselves as speaking English “very 174 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology well, well, not well, or not at all.” Between 1990 and 2011, the Census Bureau classified all members of a household in which no one over the age of 14 self- identified as speaking English “very well,” as “linguistically isolated”:30 A linguistically isolated household is one in which no person aged 14 or over speaks English at least ‘Very well.’ That is, no person aged 14 or over speaks only English at home, or speaks another language at home and speaks English ‘Very well.’ A linguistically isolated person is any person living in a linguistically isolated household. All the members of a linguistically isolated household are tabulated as linguistically isolated, including members under 14 years old who may speak only English. (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2003) The classification of “linguistically isolated” completely erases both skills in languages other than English for people over the age of 14 and English language skills of children ages 14 and under in so-called “linguistically isolated” households. As Zentella (2007:34) has pointed out: “Linguistically isolated” is an inaccurate and discriminatory label, since it categorizes as “isolated” only the 45 percent of households in the USA where adults who speak another language have some difficulty with English (55 percent speak English very well), not the great majority of the U.S. households (82 percent) in which no one speaks anything but English. The one nation-one language-one people thinking that informs notions such as “linguistic isolation” also plays a structuring role in English-only language legislation and remedial bilingual education policies. The conception of linguistic isolation slips from an assessment of abilities in English to claims about linguistic deficiency altogether.31 It is also the case that “linguistic isolation” erases the existence of legitimate U.S. non-English speaking communities, as well as communities in which English is characterized as deficient (with people who don’t speak “very well”). That is, one is only legitimately in community when speaking what are perceived as legitimate varieties of English to other perceived speakers of legitimate English. This governmental definition of community reflects the racializing ways in which ideologies of languagelessness position particular populations and language practices as having no legitimate place within the nation-state. The notion of “linguistic isolation” demonstrates that while remedial bilingual education policies detrimentally impact everyday school life for students designated as ELLs, the broader raciolinguistic ideologies that shape these policies have implications for all Latinas/os and can be understood as what Skutnabb-Kangas (1988:13) calls linguicism, which she formulates as “linguistically argued racism.”32 The expectation that Latinas/os should demonstrate standardized proficiency in two languages, coupled with perspectives from which they are perpetually perceived as failing or unable to do so, subjects them to the experience of double-stigmatization. The dual-monolingual academic ideal of elite bilingualism leads to the devaluation and erasure of Latina/o English and Spanish language abilities that are construed as illegitimate in relation to imagined linguistic exemplars.

Languagelessness Experienced: Yesi’s Case Many of the younger siblings of the Latina/o students among whom I conducted ethnographic research in Chicago were bilingual English-Spanish users, yet they learned to deny their Spanish language abilities in school and became ashamed of their “accented” English as soon as their first year of elementary school. These young people were already facing the racialization of their language use as unfit for and deficient within mainstream school settings. The very linguistic practices that might be prized were they produced by students embodying normative whiteness, position racialized students as inferior and in need of perpetual remediation through ideologies of languagelessness. Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 175

This was true even for the highest achieving NNHS students. Yesi, a top NNHS student and member of the school’s first graduating class, went on to attend a highly selective liberal arts college; she was one of only two students in the two graduating classes I followed who attended a “Tier 1” college. Yesi came to Chicago from Puerto Rico at the age of four. In interactions with family and friends, I regularly observed her drawing on a range of English and Spanish linguistic practices; she also took four years of academic Spanish. In her first year of college, Yesi enrolled in an intermediate Spanish composition and conversation course. A complete over- achiever, she attended the professor’soffice hours every week, carefully noted his comments, turned in all the assignments on time, completed five extra credit essays, and did not miss a single class. At the end of the semester, Yesi called me in tears and reported that she was only able to achieve a “D” in the course. She attributed the grade to her “slang” Spanish and her trouble with the various writing assignments that constituted the primary graded work for the course. Yesi explained that this course made her feel as though she couldn’t speak “her language” and that as a result she had failed her family and herself. Yesi’s accounts of her classroom experiences suggest that perceptions of her communicative deficiencies by her college professor were not only related to her empirical linguistic practices but also to her marked racial position. These experiences contrasted maximally with those in her NHHS Advanced Placement Spanish class, which Yesi described as an “amazing experience.” She said that the Advanced Placement course produced far less anxiety than her other courses and that “Spanish was a neutral ground” she shared with her Latina/o classmates. Yesi’s Latina Spanish teacher at NNHS made it clear that Puerto Rican and Mexican Spanish were perfectly legitimate varieties (in reference to the backgrounds of the majority of the students in the class) and that students should see the class as an opportunity to build on the skills that they already possessed. Yesi said that this class helped her to communicate with her father, whom she described as Spanish-dominant, more comfortably than ever before. She also scored a 4 on the Advanced Placement exam; this score counts for university credit at many U.S. institutions of higher education. Unlike the transitional bilingual education program at NNHS, the AP Spanish class was a space in which Latina/o students’ bilingual repertoires were not construed through ideologies of languagelessness. However, in her college studies, Yesi faced language ideologies that stigmatize many heritage language users as incapable of producing spoken and written Spanish forms that correspond to standardized language and literacy practices (Leeman 2012). In a particularly embarrassing incident, her professor excoriated her publicly for saying troque instead of camion (truck). He viewed troque as a problematic English calque, and suggested that Yesi’s parents would never talk like that. Yesi interpreted this incident as a public shaming. She explained, “it hurt a lot, I felt like he was calling me stupid.” While Yesi’s Spanish language use was policed for signs of English contamination and vice versa, normative white students are not faced with these forms of surveillance (Flores and Rosa 2015). In addition to facing unfair surveillance and stigmatization through this kind of boundary policing, as one of only two non- White students and the only Latina/o in the class, Yesi also felt pressured to outperform her classmates because of their expectation that a Spanish class should be easy for Latina/o students. She suggested that the biggest problems in her Spanish class were essay assignments, for which she regularly received failing grades. Her professor told her, “¡Estas haciendo errores basicos!” (You are making basic mistakes!). The linguistic forms in question included verb conjugations and gender agreement between articles and nouns.33 Yesi noted that her almost exclusively white classmates had great difficulty engaging in conversations in Spanish, and that what she perceived as their deviations from standardized Spanish norms were not subjected to the same kind of scrutiny or stigmatization she faced. In contrast to 176 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology her high school experiences, Yesi’s regular use of the Spanish language in her everyday experiences and extensive knowledge of nuances such as Puerto Rican- specific and Mexican-specific forms did not contribute to her success in this college course. Yesi’s experience demonstrates the different ways that raciolinguistic ideologies stigmatize racially minoritized populations depending on the context. In NNHS, it was crucial to produce what were perceived as unmarked English forms so as to avoid being labeled an English Language Learner. At her elite liberal arts college, however, Yesi’s marked language practices in both Spanish and English were part of the “diversity” that she was recruited to contribute to the campus. In these contexts, diversity is a commodity constituted by the presence and practices of students marked as culture-bearers; importantly, “culture” and “diversity” function as euphemistic stand-ins for race (Urciuoli 2009). Yesi’s duty to contribute to campus diversity pulled her in several directions. She felt the need to display both Puerto Rican and pan-Latina diversity. Her Puerto Rican Spanish provided the linguistic means to achieve the former outside of the classroom, but she would need to take a college Spanish course in order to achieve the latter. Yesi struggled to manage the competing authenticities that her particular “diversity” required her to emanate. She was recruited to embody and enact Latina authenticity through her use of the Spanish language while she nearly failed her Spanish course. At the same time, her peers often corrected her English language use and more than one professor asked whether English was her “native” language when commenting on and correcting the papers she wrote in English. In some instances, Yesi’s Spanish was “not good enough” and “contaminated” by English; in others, her English was perceived as “incorrect” and “contaminated” by Spanish. Yesi said that on campus she felt as though she did not know how to use any language properly and wondered whether she should say or write anything at all, a powerful testimonial of the profoundly disempowering experiences of attributed languagelessness. In the summer following Yesi’s first year at college, she worked with the same college bridge program for Chicago Public Schools students that had helped her to gain acceptance to college while she was a student at NNHS. Approximately one- third of the program’s 100 participants were Latina/o. The program, based in a prominent Chicago university, had no Latina/o or English-Spanish bilingual employees other than Yesi. Upon learning about the expected cost of college tuition, many Latina/o parents pulled their children out of the program. The program’s directors needed someone to help bilingual English-Spanish speaking students explain to their Spanish-dominant parents in a culturally effective way that they would have a variety of financial aid opportunities. By stepping into this role, Yesi became one of the program’s most prized employees. Her cultural and linguistic knowledge of Spanish and English was suddenly made valuable just a few short weeks after she nearly failed an intermediate Spanish language course and faced constant correction of her spoken and written English. This demonstrates the dramatically disparate, contextual ways that one’s language use can be framed as an invaluable resource or a sign of perpetual deficiency. These shifting valuations are characteristic of the slippery, racialized ways in which the relationship between ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness can perpetually stigmatize populations in particular contexts, and how conditions within other settings produce alternative perspectives that render otherwise stigmatized practices legitimate and useful.

Conclusion The racialized relationship between ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness is central to the analysis of U.S. Latina/o linguistic practices and identities. Too often, claims are made–and believed—that the English language in Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 177 itself will provide U.S. Latinas/os with access to societal inclusion. For Latinas/os who are classified as “English Language Learners” in U.S. schools or as “Limited English Proficient” in other mainstream institutional contexts, the implication is that there is a “language barrier” that must be overcome in order for them to become legitimate participants in and members of the nation-state. However, millions of U.S.- born and/or raised Latinas/os who identify as bilingual, English-dominant, or monolingual English users and yet still experience profound forms of inequality in the realms of education, employment, housing, health care, the criminal justice system, electoral politics, etc., clearly demonstrate that this is not the case. The same could be said for countless other racialized people in the United States, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, and Native Americans, who face similar raciolinguistic ideologies and forms of stigmatization even if they identify as monolingual English users. This article has focused on examples of ideologies of languagelessness that characterize U.S. Latinas/os as using no language legitimately, the definition of Latina/o bilingualism as deficiency, Latinas’/os’ perpetual designation as English Language Learners, the notion of “non-non” in bilingual education, the U.S. Census Bureau’s category of “linguistic isolation,” and the theoretical concept of “semilingualism.” However, ideologies of languagelessness have manifested themselves in many other contexts, from the onset of colonial contact between Europe and the Americas, in which indigenous populations were figured as having “no language at all” (Greenblatt 1990:17), to more recent cases in which African Americans and other groups have been said to suffer from “language gaps” (Rosa and Flores 2015), “verbal deprivation” (Bereiter and Engelmann 1966), and the inability to produce intelligible language (Smalls 2016). For various racialized groups, neither the use of a particular “national” language nor the standardized variety of that language alone can ensure societal inclusion. Note that the quotations from Bloomfield and the NNHS teacher with which this article began were articulated more than 80 years apart in relation to completely different ethnoracial groups, languages, and social contexts. The striking similarity between these quotations speaks to the powerfully entrenched nature of the relationship between ideologies of standardization and languagelessness on the one hand, and the anchoring of these ideologies in longstanding processes of racialization on the other.

Notes 1. This article has benefitted tremendously from close readings of previous drafts by Misty Jaffe, Susan Gal, Michael Silverstein, Adrienne Lo, Angela Reyes, Elaine Chun, Kelda Jamison, Amy Cooper, Nelson Flores, Vanessa Rosa, and anonymous reviewers. Jacqueline Lazu, Ana Celia Zentella, Bonnie Urciuoli, Jacqueline Urla, Stanton Wortham, Elizabeth Todd-Breland, and Yarimar Bonilla have been wonderfully generous in our dialogues about these ideas. I would also like to thank Kathryn Woolard for her incisive suggestions based on a version of this article that I presented at the 2011 AAA meetings in Montreal, and Sophie Kelsall for providing a last-minute Spanish translation of the abstract. Lastly, I am grateful for support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, National Science Foundation, and Ford Foundation for the research and writing of this article. 2. Throughout the article I use the term “Latina/o” as a gender-neutral way of referring to U.S.-based persons of Latin American descent. I use the terms “Latino” and “Latina” when referring to males or females, respectively. While both the term “Hispanic” and the masculine form “Latino” are often used to refer to refer to Latinas/os in general, more recently the terms “Latin@” and “Latinx” have emerged as gender-neutral and non-binary usages, respectively. 3. It is crucial to note how ideologies of language standardization can contribute both to political exclusion and belonging. While this article’s analysis of language standardization emphasizes the former, Urla (2012) has shown how some social actors draw on ideologies of language standardization in order to stake claims to legitimate political subjectivities. In Urla’s 178 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology particular case, ideologies of language standardization are central to activist efforts that intertwine language revitalization and political autonomy. 4. I analyze each of these examples in greater detail later in this article to show how assessments of language use are tied to broader racializing processes of stigmatization and dehumanization. 5. In fact, this example demonstrates the importance of analyzing phenomena such as race, class, and gender intersectionally in order to understand the particular ways in which these categories of identity—as well as related ones such as sexuality, age, and ability—are co- constituted in a given context. 6. See Lempert and Silverstein (2012) for an analysis of the ways that George W. Bush derived political value from his perceived linguistic blunders. 7. Many Latina/o students are perpetually designated as “English Language Learners” and relegated to a second-class educational status even if they engage in language practices that might be academically valued were they produced by normative white students. See Flores and Rosa (2015) for an analysis of how stigmatizing perceptions of particular minoritized groups’ linguistic practices are structured by raciolinguistic ideologies that construe racialized populations’ language use as deviant or inferior even when, from other perspectives, it might it might seem to correspond to standardized norms. 8. Blommaert, Collins, and Slembrouck (2005) also analyze how constructions of linguistic and communicative competence create perspectives from which some people are understood to speak no language. However, they do not discuss the racialized ways in which these ideas often take shape. 9. Bonfiglio (2002) shows how race has anchored the historical construction of these models in the United States, such that conceptions of the American East Coast as the center of contaminating immigrant and racial otherness came to position the West and Midwest as sites of ideal American language use and personhood. 10. The name of the school and all persons are pseudonyms. 11. Transcription conventions are as follows: Spanish forms are italicized, followed by English translations in parenthesis. Clarifying information is provided in parenthesis. = Interruption or next utterance following immediately ... Noticeable pause (untimed) underline Emphatic stress or increased amplitude 12. In this sense, Dr. Baez’s switch from English to Spanish might be interpreted as the opposite of what Bourdieu (1991) describes as “strategies of condescension,” in which actors in positions of power draw on minoritized language practices to appeal to marginalized audiences or to seem like they are just everyday people. As opposed to a strategy of condescension, Dr. Baez’s comments could be understood as an index of linguistic insecurity. 13. http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/dingledine-q-and-a-part-2/, accessed January 29, 2016. 14. http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/aug/31/dyson-heydon-rejects- call-to-disqualify-himself-from-union-royal-commission, accessed January 29, 2016. 15. Ms. Johnson’s pejorative assessments of Dr. Baez’s language use and intelligence might seem like inconsequential commentary from a relatively powerless institutional subordinate. However, Dr. Baez’s instituional vulnerability was revealed when, shortly after I finshed conducting fieldwork, she was removed as principal of NNHS. Despite overseeing the school’s achievement of one of the highest graduation rates in Chicago in her first years as principal, Dr. Baez was accused of transgressions such as allowing students who lived outside the school’s attendance boundaries to enroll at NNHS and allowing students to participate in the free lunch program even though they did not meet eligibility requirements. I do not seek to connect teachers’ and other employees’ commentary about Dr. Baez’s language use and intelligence to her removal as principal in any straightforward, causal ways. Instead, my aim is to highlight how perceptions of Dr. Baez’s incompetence and illegitimacy positioned her as institutionally vulnerable vis-a-vis teachers and other employees in ways that might not be readily apparent. 16. Throughout the article I use the phrase “students designated as ELLs” in order to emphasize that “English Language Learner” should be understood as an institutional classification rather than an empirical linguistic status. Many students designated as ELLs demonstrated a wide range of English language abilities that were systematically erased or devalued (Flores and Rosa 2015). Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 179

17. This spatialized icon of the marginalization of students designated as ELLs was shaped by a stratification of language use similar to Silverstein’s (2003) aformentioned conical model of ethnolinguistic hegemony. 18. Previous studies of Latina/o students in Chicago have found collaborations among children with varying Spanish and English language skills, with children frequently developing their skills as “language mediators” (Olmedo 2005; Potowski 2005). These important studies were conducted with students at a different developmental life stage from the students at NNHS (i.e., elementary school) and in a very particular language learning context (i.e., dual-language schools that promote bilingualism for all students). 19. Similar to the phrase “students designated as ELLs,” I use the term “mainstreamed” instead of “mainstream” to refer to students who were not designated as ELLs in efforts to emphasize an institutional designation rather than an empirical linguistic positionality. 20. LEP (Limited English Proficiency) is a common designation in U.S. governmental, juridical, and educational contexts. 21. My invocation of “full” bilingualism demonstrates the ways that even experts such as linguistic anthropologists can invoke stigmatizing language ideologies that problematically position different linguistic repertoires as comparatively “full” or “incomplete.” 22. The total student population during both the 2007–2008 and 2008–2009 school years was roughly 980. Based on my observations, the majority of these students regularly engaged in both English and Spanish language practices. 23. The process that Fishman characterizes as “Anglification” captures some of the linguistic and cultural dimensions of assimilation, but this process must also be conceptualized as a project of deracialization or “Whitening.” 24. This problematic redefinition of bilingualism is tied to what many analysts have critiqued as “subtractive” bilingual education programs, in which English language skills are gained at the expense of Spanish language skills (Valenzuela 1999; Valdes 2000). 25. Later in this article I discuss the ways that mainstreamed Latina/o students (i.e., those who were not designated as English Language Learners) were able to draw on and develop their Spanish language skills in Spanish language classrooms curricularly positioned within the broader U.S. model of “foreign language education.” However, in many of these classroom contexts, bilingual Latina/o students discover that their Spanish language use is viewed as incorrect and in need of remediation from the perspective of standardized Spanish language curricula. 26. ACCESS stands for Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State- to-State for English Language Learners. It is the name of the English proficiency test that is used in more than half of the nation’s states. It was created in 2002, following the implementation of President George W. Bush’s comprehensive educational reform plan, No Child Left Behind. 27. Dr. Baez’s investment in “professionalism” could also explain her aforementioned comment about speaking Spanish at the graduation. She might have questioned whether her Spanish language practices were legitimate in the context of a public graduation ceremony, where projecting an image of professionalism is frequently a central concern. This is a familiar form of linguistic insecurity with which people positioned as “heritage” language users and learners are regularly faced, wherein conceptions of linguistic legitimacy in particular institutional settings devalue their language skills (Zentella 2007; Leeman 2012). Heritage language users and learners are often understood to lack academic skills in languages to and through which they were socialized outside of mainstream school settings. For the purposes of this analysis, it is crucial to emphasize that U.S. conceptions of “academic language,” like “Standard English,” are often rooted in race and class-based ideologies that associate these categories with normative whiteness. Thus, racialized heritage language users are often seen as linguistically deficient when engaging in practices that are valued for normative white language users (Flores and Rosa 2015). For more on Dr. Baez’s notion of “Young Latina/o Professionals,” see Rosa (2014b). 28. States vary in the length of time students are designated as ELLs before being labeled Long-Term English Learners (Flores, Kleyn, and Menken 2015). 29. Scholars including linguistic anthropologists (Irvine and Gal 2000), applied linguists (Makoni and Pennycook 2007), and historical linguists (Bonfiglio 2010) have pointed to the powerful ideologies through which categories such as “home language,”“native language,” “first language,” and “mother tongue” are constructed. Silverstein (2003) points out that “glottonyms,” such as “English,”“Spanish,” and “French,” are themselves highly naturalized ideological constructions with longstanding ties to nation-building projects. Elsewhere (Rosa 180 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

2014a), I have explored the ways that notions of rigidly bounded languages are constructed and deconstructed in contexts such as NNHS and its surrounding communities. 30. In response to critiques of this usage by the American Anthropological Association’s Language and Social Justice Task Group, the U.S. Census Bureau has ceased its use of the label “linguistically isolated.” There are ongoing discussions about possible replacements, as well as alternative ways of recognizing and valuing bi/multilingualism. 31. Leeman (2004) has examined the racialization of language throughout the history of the U.S. Census. 32. U.S. Latinas/os are also the targets of other forms of linguicism, such as what Baugh (2003) calls “linguistic profiling.” In May 2010, a Puerto Rican man who was born on the island and raised in Chicago was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who suspected that he was undocumented. After the man was released, he told reporters, “[The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent] did not believe I was Puerto Rican because of the way I look and the way I talk...I guess I have a Mexican accent.” In another example, police officers in Dallas, Texas issued dozens of traffic citations between 2007–2009 to people for being “non English-speaking drivers.” The citations, which were issued almost exclusively to Latinas/os, were later invalidated when it became clear that there was no law requiring police to monitor drivers’ English language proficiency. These officers, literally the language police, demonstrate the racialized ways in which lingusitic profiling targets Latinas/os and their langauge practices. 33. Urciuoli (2008) explores the forms of inequality that structure the experiences of Latina/o undergraduate students in university-level Spanish language courses, as well as the neoliberal politics of “diversity” that recruit these students to display their Latina/o authenticity. References Alim, H. Samy and Angela Reyes 2011 Complicating Race: Articulating Race across Multiple Social Dimensions. Discourse and Society 22(4):379–384. Baltodano, Marta P. 2004 Latino Immigrant Parents and the Hegemony of Proposition 227. Latino Studies 2 (2):246–253. Baugh, John 2003 Linguistic Profiling. In Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas. Sinfree Makoni, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha F. Ball, and Arthur K. Spears, eds. Pp. 155–168. London: Routledge. Bauman, Richard and Charles L. Briggs 2003 Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bereiter, Carl and Siegfried Engelmann 1966 Teaching Disadvantaged Children in the Preschool. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall. Blommaert, Jan, James Collins, and Stef Slembrouck 2005 Spaces of Multilingualism. Language & Communication 25:197–216. Bloomfield, Leonard 1927 Literate and Illiterate Speech. American Speech 2:432–439. Bonfiglio, Thomas Paul 2002 Race and the Rise of Standard American. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 2010 Mother Tongues and Nations: The Invention of the Native Speaker. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bourdieu, Pierre 1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chun, Elaine and Adrienne Lo 2016 Language and Racialization. In Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology. Nancy Bonvillain, ed. Pp. 220–233. New York: Taylor & Francis. Cummins, James 2001[1976] The Influence of Bilingualism on Cognitize Growth: A Synthesis of Research Findings and Explanatory Hypotheses. In An Introductory Reader to the Writings of Jim Cummins. Colin Baker and Nancy Hornberger, eds. Pp. 26–55. Clevedon, UK: Multilin- gual Matters Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness 181

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